Keyword Landscape Analysis
Lead: Brian Dean (backlinko.com)
Support: FrontPage Data (frontpagedata.com)
Last updated on 2020-11-16
1 Introduction
Keyword data informs and impacts every other SEO task, including finding content topics, on-page SEO, email outreach, and content promotion. While a wealth of companies provide granular keyword data, a birds-eye view of Google Searches is missing in the industry. This large-scale analysis aims to fill the gap.
2 Methodology
As a data partner, DataForSEO provided the raw data for the analysis through their keyword database [https://dataforseo.com/databases]. The analysis was limited to US keyword data that accounted for around 306 keyword searches. Keyword monthly searchers with volume of 0 were removed from the data set. The data was queried from a Google BigQuery database.
To attain additional insights from the data, we enriched a random sample of around 2.5 million keywords with the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer. This includes the data on difficulty, return rate, clicks, region volume, and SERP features.
Below an overview of the data:
| Statistic | Value |
|---|---|
| Total number of searches | ~306 million |
| Total volume of searches | ~32 billion |
| Searches with missing volume | 0.51% |
| Mean search volume | 989 |
| Median search volume | 10 |
| Mean CPC | 0.61 |
3 Research Findings
3.1 Top searches
These are the most popular searches, with volume based on ahref:
| Keyword | Volume |
|---|---|
| youtube | 0.546% |
| 0.530% | |
| amazon | 0.407% |
| gmail | 0.296% |
| 0.271% | |
| weather | 0.164% |
| yahoo | 0.161% |
| ebay | 0.161% |
| walmart | 0.145% |
| yahoo mail | 0.143% |
| netflix | 0.139% |
| google docs | 0.100% |
| translate | 0.098% |
| usps tracking | 0.093% |
| news | 0.091% |
| craigslist | 0.091% |
| fox news | 0.091% |
| cnn | 0.083% |
| calculator | 0.073% |
| hotmail | 0.064% |
| roblox | 0.063% |
| target | 0.063% |
| 0.057% | |
| msn | 0.057% |
| trump | 0.054% |
| 0.054% | |
| bank of america | 0.051% |
| new year | 0.051% |
| maps | 0.050% |
| nfl | 0.044% |
| ups tracking | 0.042% |
| 0.041% | |
| 0.041% | |
| espn | 0.038% |
| disney plus | 0.037% |
| etsy | 0.036% |
| usps | 0.035% |
| finance | 0.033% |
| aol | 0.029% |
| women’s world cup 2019 | 0.026% |
| nba | 0.024% |
| you | 0.023% |
| amazon prime video | 0.022% |
| internet speed test | 0.021% |
| bed bath and beyond | 0.021% |
| ikea | 0.020% |
| dow | 0.018% |
| food near me | 0.018% |
| united airlines | 0.018% |
| speedtest | 0.017% |
3.2 Search volume
The top searches have high volume compared to the remaining ~300 million.
| Searches | Volume |
|---|---|
| Top 50 | 4.9% |
| Top 500 | 8.4% |
| Top 2000 | 12.2% |
| Top 10k | 18.8% |
3.3 Spell types
If a misspelling is recognized, a so-called spell type is suggested. There are three types of spell shown in the table below. 1.4% of searches have a spell type, but those that do have tend to have high volume.
3.4 Questions in searches
~14% of searches are in the form of a question. “how” is the most common question word.
Although only about 1% of the total volume of searches are questions
3.5 Stopwords
“how” and “the” are the most common stopwords, which are present in 6-8% of searches.
A colorful version:
3.6. Keyword length
The most searched queries have length 6-9 characters, and falls continuously for search queries longer or shorter than that.
Search phrases with fewer words have higher volume
3.7 Keyword info categories
Internet & Telecom is the keyword category with the highest mean volume.
Arts & Entertainment, Internet & Telecom, and News, Media & Publications have the highest total volume.
Finance has the highest mean cost per click.
The average CPC for all searches is 0.61
3.8 Keyword difficulty
As volume increases, the difficulty increases.
